#malaphin

Word count: 4000

Why…?

“I’m sorry, Mal,” a small voice cries, sniffling as the sensation of teeth bite at lip, hands pressing against face. “Goodbye.”

Why…?

There’s a shock, a rapid snap as the somatic link is torn in two. It tears through the nerves inside his head, blistering pain tearing through biological circuits and flesh tearing as his maw is forced open screaming silent, rearing a gilded spine backwards and pressing back against the wall. The pain is unrelenting, electricity tearing through and making muscles spasm and constrict, striking hard floor and wall as he tries to pull the pain out of his back, his spine, tearing at the protective plates with trembling claws. Systems he never knew he had kick into high gear, forcing air through gnashing teeth.

The excalibur tries to get a hold of himself as the electric shock storm through his body, feeling himself start going numb, fingers tingling as he digs into pain in his spine. They trace as they try to claw, gasping for air as freed somatic circuits shock his heart and make it seize up.

Faulty

They’re puppets.

They won’t feel pain.

Don’t.

Words storm through his panicking senses, chest drawn tight as his limbs start failing him, collapsing back in a senseless heap of whimpers and aches. Slowly, as electricity surges through what ever parts of him are not numb, his digits twitch as he tries to pull himself together, head lying lax against his shoulder against the wall.

Dysfunctional, faulty, only useful for combat…

It aches inside his chest as he grows tired, feeling his consciousness drift as he tries to right himself, failing at each attempt.

His breathing eventually settles – not from the reduction of pain but from the quitting of his sensitive nervous system, only able to watch through pin-point sight around the gilded omega symbol in place of a face.

He’s tired.

So tired.

But he can’t.

Theirs a lingering tightness in his chest, tangling and twisting as his sense of time goes out of sync, only able to watch disconnected to his body in a daze. He’s made motionless, barely breathing, watching as arboriforms start to cover him.

Strands white turned tattered grey claw in a thousand places, digging through his skin and flesh, humming against his face, in his throat, deep against his heart as temporal numb nerves are replaced with humming fibers, keeping him conscious as he relives the pain.

Over.

And over.

And over.

Digging deep through his chest.

Arboriforms withers and morphs around him, taking over parts of his numb flesh, consuming him until there is nothing left.

Captive, a prisoner in his own body.

A tearing at his side takes him from the reoccurring nightmare, barely able to move his head – his left side absorbed into corrupted arboriform. The foliage creaks as his head pulls a tilt down, watching a wandering infested maggot nibble at the exposed flesh of his thigh. Exposed teeth sigh as he forces his right arm down from a comfortable hanging, tugging thin arboriform strands taut. A wave of skin stripped fingers discourages the infested pest for a moment, watching it circling around, jagged teeth breathing before it returns, biting mutilated orange bleeding flesh.

Again, he swats it away with a flick of his wrist, almost smacking it away with his restricted range of motion – it hurts to let it pull down any longer. “Get,” he inhumanly growls, a voice scrapping with fatigue and restrained rage.

The maggot is persistent, returning for a third time.

Bare bone claws dig into the pest’s back as it barely squeaks a screech, falling limp as the arboriform infested hand squeezes its chitin.

The tethered prime sighs, letting his arm withdraw to its resting hang, staring over the maggot’s corpse held tight in his skin-stripped hand. He winces as he breathes, feeling fibers prickle inside his aching lung and heart. “Disgusting thing,” he mumbles. Once the prickling pain subsides, he tosses the body across the room with a bare flick of his wrist – sudden and quick.

Mal grunts as he reclines within his resting place, half of his body consumed in arboriform strands that hold him near firmly in place. Pulsations of his energy orange bleed among the traces of blue-green within the arboriform bark – fastened deep inside his body, choking around his organs and muscle mass. He breathes in slow and shallow, wheezing in the stale and spore laden air as he stares vacantly and drifts back into his shell of a body, drawing his sense of self through the ship-wide arboriform structure. He may be cemented firmly in place, limbs melded into corrupted arboriform, but at least this way he can explore the crypt.

Even as his mind leaves his body, Mal can still feel infested follicles tickle over his exposed flesh – a constant reminder as he scours the numerous quiet rooms and arboriform tethers. Against his own he can feel the ships ill laden heart beat – half steps trembling as it tries to find air for circulation, to clean the air of thick toxin that’s inside its strands, deep inside its walls, a relentless disease he had watched dispensed so long ago.

He’s not the only one bound in the arboriform prison; he reminds himself as he views others scattered where they laid. Disconnected, just like him; left after they were no longer deemed ‘useful’, just like him; left to rot… just like him. The prime wasn’t the last, nor was he the first to be utterly abandoned and left for time to decide their fate. In the back of his thoughts, he hopes to never find one suddenly screaming, alive and calling for help that will never come.

They’re only found barely breathing, their minds a frayed mess and a consciousness too far gone to beckon them back to their bodies. The damage is too heavy, their corpses repurposed by the surviving reach of the struggling derelict.

Just like him.

His body hisses as wandering strands pierce through a chunk of his remaining skin, crawling upon an upheld arm where a hand had already been speared by an arboriform branch. It draws him back to his body, his other bound hand tugging arboriforms taut as he yanks the sharp digging away from his black and emerald skin. Oxygenated yellow drips from the wandering hook, taking to biting it with his jagged teeth, rending it of searching spines.

And he falls back into his neutral state, head held in place by a trunk that took half his face.

Almost his entire right side had been stripped of skin – flayed alive and covered with writhing arboriform barely remaining an illuminated white. His chest peaks out of the crossing of arboriforms that take his lower ribs, down where it has engulfed his leg and stripped it bare. His face gleams orange and peach – exposed flesh among the remains of what had marked a primed excalibur. Bare teeth gleam between the corrupted bark, parts that snake down through his throat and excavate through his lower ribs. His remaining leg is untouched – even limp as it lies numb to his longest attempt to get the part to move.

He just wants to rest; but the ship breathes through his lungs, their heart beat matched as the ship struggles to keep itself alive. It’s synthetic heart, a power system corroded by time, is already poisoned and struggling to remain alive. Keeping him alive through a selfish will.

In the distance, he can hear the popping of infested cysts; a splitting of boils muted in rapid succession as an infested screeches. He figures it’s just the residential infested again, fighting among themselves.

But, as he looks through the arboriform nerves he can see shambling masses stop, contorted heads looking around as the strange sounds repeat. They’re drawn silent as an infested behemoth plods around the fresh corpses, wandering alone and confused. Within the corrupted arboriforms the prime can feel a nervous hesitation – worried about being wiped out for good this time. A silent killer strain.

From the shadows, Mal watches.

In the dim light a shape seems to step out of nowhere behind the shambling mass, their claws grasping around a rearranged throat as it draws out a shimmering blade covered in blood. With one clean slice it cleaves the infested quiet, jabbing it finally still in a precise execution. He can make out the shape of forward angled horns, a metallic back plate with tubed piping extending from its spine. A loki frame, but unlike the wheezing corpse found not too far away from them.

With the blade still in hand, they stare are the breathing body wound up in arboriform bark, breathing through a throat long torn up. At their side, a pistol.

And they fire a single shot into the tethered body’s head.

The corpse contorts as senseless arms try to reach to its hanging head, the skinless face gnarling and screaming quiet. It’s not the body’s consciousness reacting, Mal can’t feel their mind as the ship’s arboriform strains, crying out from within as another shot splits the head wide open. The stranger stands silent, their barrel hovering over the snarling head barely attached to the body wound up in arboriforms. Its head is split wide open, a brain case empty of matter.

Internally the ship screams inside its arboriform strands as it loses hold of the body, crying out enough to only make an external bare hum. It’s not enough to gain a stranger’s attention, an ambience among the sizzling of infested fluids, the gargling of cleaved corpses as they continue to explore.

Mal’s body wheezes as the ship tries to compensate for the panicking corpse in the other room – watching as the stranger wanders closer to where he’s bound. He can feel as his body begins to choke, trying to hold his bared throat as the squeezing in his chest tightens, forcing noise through filled throat.

He can hear gunshots, ones that draw the attention of lingering infested that pay his exposed body no mind. Even as he tries to block out the hammering sounds, his senses intensify as the ship’s nervous systems become transfixed, mortified as the stranger slaughters the infested single-handedly.

It’s scared.

Even as the arboriforms dig inside his orange flesh, the prime quietly waits. It’s trying to get more out of him; and there is nothing left for him to give.

His breathing trembles, flesh flashing with energetic yellow that bleeds into the corrupted arboriform branches as the stranger enters the hall – an attempt at intimidation, one the arboriforms force. As they approach, they have a gun in one hand, a dripping blade in another. Their skin is off-white and dark tan, decorated with numerous streaks of black scar tissue.

And they stand there; waiting, watching, as the prime looks up at them with a skinned face and a tired sigh. The silence extends as the arboriform nerves panic, injected energy into its host body. It makes Mal sick, stomach queasy as he groans, letting the branch in his head keep his head off his shoulders.

Just kill me already, Mal whines inside, uncertain if he’s even able to speak.

The stranger holsters their weapons before they kneel over his bark covered leg, the loki’s faceless sight close to his own, staring at a face made only of bare muscles and metal plates.

Another pause.

A hesitation.

There’s a hum of white blue that bleeds over their skin, blurring as they step back.

A person was left in their place, strapped in a thick coat and loose pants. Against his leg Mal can feel heavy claws dig against the arboriform metabolizing his leg. Their face, his face, was half corroded and seared black, barely obscured by side swept hair to hide an eye turned to flesh and a mouth turned into exposed snarling teeth. But it’s the untampered side that draws Mal’s attention – they’re human, or once were.

‘Transference…’ the dilapidated prime muses, ‘not orokin, a tenno…’

“Warframe,” the man speaks, squatted close with hands clasped – one is clawed, the other human. “Do you have a name?”

Mal chokes, trying to find his voice as it creaks through arboriform bark.

“I’m sorry, Mal,” Natia’s voice cries in the back of his mind.

He tries once, twice, and words barely form in the third attempt. “Mal,” he can barely talk, branches writhing through his flesh.

The stranger stares at the surging arboriform bark, their mouth twisted into a grimace as his dark claws graze over where it protrudes from the prime’s flesh. They touch over Mal’s bare right arm, carefully grazing down from shoulder to hanging hand – where Mal returns the grip. “Does it hurt, Mal?”

Mal can feel the barbs in his throat, digging through his chest and spine. “Yes.”

Silence passes between them, the prime watching as the tenno turns to fiddle with his satchel.

“How long has it been…?” Mal barely forces through his inflamed throat, a bare whisper the stranger can barely catch. “The sentients-“

“The old war is over,” the stranger interrupts. In his hand is a serrated blade, one he holds against the arboriform digging into Mal’s face. “There’s no more Orokin empire either, they’re gone.”

The excalibur goes silent, letting the warm hands guide his head as the blade cuts into the living bark.

“Did you have an operator, Mal…?” the stranger asks, turning to motion his warframe back on patrol. The loki leaves them with a backwards glance, continuing an extermination that makes the arboriforms tremble.

“Yes,” the prime breathes, feeling the arboriform being cut from his face. It’s only a faint pain, not as severe as the bristling in his chest, the breaking of flesh for growing bark.

“What was their name?”

“Natia… she abandoned me…”

The strange tenno holds over the excalibur’s bared teeth, careful as he cuts between orange metallic plates that once made a brilliant crescent. He’s quiet, carefully picking bark splinters out of bleeding flesh. No matter how careful he is, there is still more arboriform to cut through – a mouth turning sour.

“What is… your name…?” Mal heaves, feeling the ship’s nervous system scream.

The stranger’s hand is gentle as the prime grimaces. “Warren; my name is Warren. Your operator, did she do so willingly?”

“She said… she was sorry.”

Mal barely sees the tenno flinch, forcing himself to return to freeing the prime’s head from the arboriform tether. “I see… they deemed you not ‘adequate’…” he mumbles, clawed hand holding against the prime’s cheek as he severs another section of the branch. What ever scraps he get he tosses them to the side, remaining focused on his task at hand. He almost has to sit on Mal as he moves to the back of the prime’s head, carefully excavating the remains of a gilded crown with emerald and black skin.

The prime does nothing, his gaze downwards and brought to near gasping as the arboriforms screams inside his head – even as the last section is cut from his head. Its still pounding in his chest, constricting him from within. Through it he hears the gunshots to limp bodies, the cruel sounds of crunching bones and sickening pools of blood. Anxiety bleeds through the arboriform strands, tangling deep in his chest and turning his head away from the tenno.

Warren wrestles Mal’s head forward, staring at the four gilded fragments that once made the prime’s brilliant face. All that was left to see was half a face – exposed orange flesh bleeding yellow over the remains of the twisted arboriform that wound into his mouth. “If she had a choice,” the tenno whispers, his lip twisted, “she would’ve kept you. They threatened anyone that got attached.”

“…I know…” is Mal’s only response, trying to let his head fall off to the side, unwilling to look another living thing in the face. Through the other strands he can still feel a shutter of pain; making him recoil as Warren’s loki continues the slaughter. “Stop,” he barely whispers, trying to turn his head away from the coiling pain.

The tenno looks almost confused as the prime writhes in his confines, tethered hands pushing with only a semblance of strength. It only takes meeting hands to stop the pushing, clawed hand holding a hand made of only bared bones and stripped down to the muscles; the other, a hand in hand. “The arboriforms… that’s what causing the pain, isn’t it?”

Mal can feel as another host body is eliminated, forcing the arboriforms to rely more on his own exhausted chest. He barely creaks through the pain, head pressed back on the arboriforms he had been separated from. “Yes.”

Warren can only sit there, watching as the tightly wound prime writhes, holding his arms gentle but firm as echoes of blooming yellow surges through the arboriform bark. They pulsate in each dispatchment of long empty bodies, his mismatched sights following the diseased arboriforms through the walls, drifting to where is loki wandered away. “I see… that’s the reason for those shells. They’re being used as surrogate bodies.” He looks back to Mal, letting his human hand fall and for the prime to grip at his vest. The hand twists at his chest, gripping and pulling as Warren fishes through the satchel at his side. “And it’s using you as the main life support.

Gifted anxiety blooms through the arboriforms wound inside Mal’s chest, a panic the prime can’t feel as pain surges through what is left of his nerves. But even if he could feel it – he just doesn’t care, anticipating a knife to tilt at his throat. He welcomes death – a way out of the long-drawn torment tethered in place as a battery for a diseased ship

Instead, something cold and wet presses against his bare teeth, the dark clawed hand letting a gripping skeletal limb twist against his jacket to hold against a bare muscle cheek. Warren is holding something against his face, trying to guide Mal’s mouth open as teeth clamp and strain. “Here, eat this,” he presses the strip sideways, near where breathing heaves, “it’s tower flesh – from one immune to the infested. It should help ease the pain.

Mal is hesitant, letting his restraint falter against the tenno’s claws and allows his mouth to be forced open. The cream fatty flesh slides against the remains of his weak conglomerate tongue; sour, thick, yet also squishy as he forces it down almost nauseously, feeling it melt down his throat and ooze. It makes him queasy, groaning as it slides deep into his systems – dissolved by heated processes. His grip remains tight on Warren’s coat and vest, pulling him close as he can barely hold himself sensible.

The tenno is quiet as Mal metabolizes the flesh, attentive and waiting for the dose to kick in – if it does at all. He’s never quite had the chance to try it, spending innumerous time trying to find a way to reverse the arboriform disease on derelict ships. He lets the warframe yank at his coat – hand crafted, custom ordered from a freelance tailor, and expensive. Bone fingers dig at the resilient fiber, balling it in a trembling fist as Mal’s pain begins to subside.

He’s the first conscious host body Warren has ever come across; saving this one body is worth a ruined coat. He can fix a coat, but he can’t bring a warframe back to life.

Warren patiently watches as Mal’s grip begins to relax, breathing coming down through heated gasps. “I told Tviska, the loki, to not kill anymore surrogates. He’s clearing the ship of infested.” Carefully, he guides Mal’s grip from his clothing, returning to cutting the arboriform bark. The prime is silent as the tenno holds his mutilated arm, cutting along the orange muscle line to free it from the binds. Once he’s done, wiping the leaking arboriform blood and residual yellow energy from the blade, he turns to the one that still looks like a hand.

Mal wraps his freed arms close to his chest, looking down at mismatched palms over the arboriforms branch wound through his chest cavity and entrapping his thigh and right leg. Warren moved away with a small device between his palms, sitting off on Mal’s left side – feet kicked out and crossed at the heels of large claws. He’s barely human, a body reeking with the affect of prolonged void exposure. He’s tapping away at something as Mal forces himself to speak. “Thanks… for helping me.”

“It’s not a problem,” Warren sighs, looking over the data screen as his concentration has been moved somewhere else. “I’m going to hang around for a bit – is that alright, Mal?”

“Oh, yeah,” the prime creaks, feeling his skeletal hand crawl up along his neck – hands free to linger where ever they want. Yet they linger over his chest, staring at the corrupted arboriform melded into his flesh. He might not be in pain, but he’s still stick in place, confused.

Why?

Warren gives him a sideways glance. “It’s not often I find a derelict host body conscious… or intact. You should count yourself lucky – though you may not feel like it.” His voice lingers, hinting at a tragic reality. “I was constantly switched from warframe to warframe in the height of the war. They wanted me faster, better, stronger; even if it meant leaving those behind. Even if it was just a slight boost; always sliding what was deemed as ‘adequate’.”  He closes the small device, moving to sit right beside the tethered prime on twisted arboriforms.

“How many… did you leave…?”

The tenno is quiet, staring down at claws and fingers. Beneath the fringe of deep auburn a flesh eye glows. “Hundreds. I barely remember any of them.”

Silence extends between them, Warren looking over the oxidizing stains replacing Mal’s spilt blood.

“Would she… have remembered me?”

“I don’t doubt it,” the tenno sighs, “if she put up a fight, she didn’t want to forget you.”

The ambient hum of the arboriform echoes around them.

Mal stares down at his hands again.

“Why…?”

“Hm?”

Silence.

Warren sighs, leaning back against the wall. “I want to be able to just save one from the practice, even if it’s just one – I could save others down the line.” His hands wring, fiddling. “If I’m going you out of those branches, I’m going to need more flesh. Sanitize this place of infested first, clean it up, heal the arboriform nerve structure. If I cut you out now…” his voice trails, aware the warframe can piece it together himself. “I’ve dissected many like you – bark wound around the heart, using you as a basis to stay alive. It’s tragic – to keep themselves alive put their host bodies at an unintended risk.”

Mal’s head droops, an exhausted tired sigh.

“It wants you alive; until it can heal itself. It’s going to take some time; and a lot more doses.” Splayed claws click against the dirty tile as the tenno moves to kneel at the warframe’s other side. “But I try to be humane,” he pauses, letting the prime look him head on, “and I won’t force you to go through with it – it’s ultimately your choice. Do you want me to save you, Mal?”

Mal is hesitant as the ship screams through his chest, spiking pain in a coil before it dissipates.

Warren is silent, waiting, releasing a tense sigh as he waits for an answer. He’s gone so far the learn warframe anatomy, how to mend them back together from parts and pieces, dissected hundreds to learn how to save just the few he has managed. The want to just bring one back from being an arboriform host hammers in his void tainted chest; anxious, but also kind. If Mal wanted to slip on quietly, he’ll allow it.

Mal’s teeth split, exhaling winding heat. “Yes.”

He doesn’t linger in the confusion, the excalibur prime surveying the stale quietness of the empty halls as he proceeds. Around him is only silence, only able to hear near muted footsteps and an ambient hum from internal processes – tapped out of his small operator’s auditory senses. An attempt to re-synchronize their link is outright denied. His operator shakes her head.

He’s not allowed; she’s not in charge.

The prime can feel his young operator’s frustration, marked by a hammering in her chest and biting lips that carries through their link. Still in conversation; not conversation, it’s not calm. There’s a soreness that ignites in his unused throat, a biting that makes him pause and hold over his gilded plated throat. It’s nothing new, he figures, continuing through the abandoned halls – and midstep he feels a harsh slap.

The sympathetic transference overrides the alteration, and he can hear what she can. “You are going to unlink from that dysfunction immediately, or face the consequences, demon! A faulty model like that has no place in the war efforts.” An older voice, one he’s heard at least a dozen times during his short series of operations. He can’t understand – dysfunction?

“I won’t! He’s my friend – I can’t just,” his operator, body shaking in effort to suppress the retaliated rage. There’s pain across their cheeks, a forming bruise on her he can only faintly feel. She was struck, and a growl rumbles through his systems. “I won’t leave him there. It’s not right,” the coil within his chest stirs, crawling up into his throat and squeezing tight. Hands land on her shoulder, and he stands still – fangs bare to nothing.

“Listen, Natia. I know you mean well,” the older voice starts, traced with a sweetness that made his operator’s stomach knot. “But, face it, it’s doing nothing to fight the sentients. You know it yourself; he can’t handle combat and that’s what warframes are only good for. They’re not people, they’re puppets.”

His operator is silent, fluid dripping at first down her stricken cheek. The tightness persists, coiling and undulating in a tide as the operator lingers in thought. He can do nothing, but wait. In the back of his thoughts lies a single word.

‘Don’t.’

“Natia,” the older voice starts again. “They won’t suffer, I promise you that. When the connection is severed they’ll be out like a light. No pain. They won’t feel a thing unlike now.” Natia’s heart surges, a choked swallow. “Right now, they can feel what you’re feeling. You don’t want him to be hurt, don’t you? It’d be better this way.” A hand strokes away rolling tears. “Don’t you remember that he feels whatever you do?”

“Y-yes,” barely creaks out of Natia, a transferred emotional twist when she realizes the excalibur is tapped into their conversation. “Can’t he be left anywhere but there, there has to still be some-”

“No,” is said strict, biting into their somatic link.

Silence.

“There’s not enough room to leave it for later. You either disconnect voluntarily, or be manually removed from them.” The voice states flat, the grip on shoulders pressing hard. “What will the choice be, Natia?” It’s said bitter and harsh, stabbing their shared tightness deeper through their link. By now the excalibur prime sat himself within the immense room he found himself in, staring at the near still waters of the abandoned Orokin ship. He sat flat against a wall, somewhere his operator guides him.

“I’m sorry, Mal,” Natia bites back, a pressure pushing at their face. “Goodbye.”